I have decided to leave Czechoslovakia, Soviet Russia, East, and West Germany as separate countries during the times they have competed in the Winter Olympics, because I believe that those delegations represent important historical moments.
The first visualization (Top 5 Medal Winning Countries Over 22 Winter
Olympics) shows information about how the top winners of the Winter
Olympics changed across 90 years. Furthermore, it also combines historic
information such as the fall of Soviet Russia (no longer a delegation
after the 1988 Olympics) and the unification of East and West Germany.
The chart below (Top 5 Medal Winning Countries across all Winter
Olympics) is much simpler but also omits important historical
information. It shows shows number of medals won by each country in
aggregated form, highlighting the 3 countries that have accumulated the
most medals since 1924.
I devised a cumulative medal index where a gold medal counts for the
most (3 points), bronze the least (1 point), and silver is in the middle
(2 points). This line chart is able to show trends not only by the
number of medals won by each country but by the value of the medals.
## # A tibble: 28 × 3
## City Country Year
## <chr> <chr> <int>
## 1 Chamonix France 1924
## 2 St. Moritz Switzerland 1928
## 3 Lake Placid United States 1932
## 4 Garmisch-Partenkirchen Germany 1936
## 5 SapporoGarmisch-Partenkirchen[d] Japan Germany 1940
## 6 Cortina d'Ampezzo Italy 1944
## 7 St. Moritz Switzerland 1948
## 8 Oslo Norway 1952
## 9 Cortina d'Ampezzo Italy 1956
## 10 Squaw Valley United States 1960
## # … with 18 more rows
I utilized a time series to answer whether the host country has an
advantage. Each line represents a country and the blue circles indicate
the year that country hosted the Winter Olympics. At first glance it
does not seem that the host country has an advantage. There are only 3
instances where the host country won the most medals: Lake
Placid, 1932; Oslo, 1953; Sochi, 2014.
A stacked bar chart represents both the number total medals won but
also the number of gold medals won by a single athlete at a glance.
I was interested in seeing whether height plays a role in the number
of medals won. The scatterplot shows an weak correlation that is
trending in the negative, where the taller an athlete the less medals
won. However, this scatterplot only shows the top 100 medal winners and
Ole Einar Bjorndalen is definietly an exception in this analysis.
I decided to add interactivity to this plot (Medals Won by 12 Winter Olympic Host Countries) because the user can inspect specific information about the countries who were hosts and compare how each country did at each of the Winter Olympics. This gives them more specific information about the specific host countries while hovering, instead of having to repeatedly refer to the legend.
I also added interactivity to the plot below (100 Winter Olympics by Height and Total Medals Won) because users can inspect the specific information about the athletes for themselves. Users are able to simultaneously see the overall trend (or lack there of) between athlete height and total medals won and hover over individual points for more information.
This table gives users the ability to search for specific information about the Winter Olympians. It provides a way to clearly see the information about athletes beyond the overall trends that are shown in the graphs above. Furthermore, the additional columns give more information about what type of medal (Bronze, Silver, Gold) the athletes won. Users can also look up their favorite athlete, filter by country or sort by different characteristics. This table has value for both users who are looking for specific information and others who can click through the options available to learn something new.